Write about the significance of the way Auden writes about characters.
Auden utilises poetry to access and describe all that is latent within society and condemn those who outcast others because of their prejudicial mindset. He comments on various situations, all of which come to represent people who do not have the true ability to speak out against the problems they endure because of the lack of attention they receive if they do. All the environments in which they are placed symbolise the cruel, impersonal, perhaps even callous nature of humanity as they seek to deal with problems which involve individuals’ own self-interests, and therefore, are reluctant to accept the problems of others as being of the same merit as theirs. Auden feels that it is his due civil responsibility to voice his concerns about this and he does so convincingly conveying the emotional and psychological weight and consequence of the problems that these people have to deal with. However, contrary to making the audience empathise with the individual characters, Auden invites us to be amused at their circumstances, to laugh at their lack of ‘worthiness’. It is through this method that we soon realise the problems we have in identifying with people in less desirable situations and we begin to recognise the problems that society, as a whole, has in the way it tries to understand people such as ‘Miss Gee’.
In Miss Gee, Auden, in my opinion, inappropriately uses the ballad form to bring to light the tragic story of Edith Gee. Her characteristics (“she had no bust at all”, “her lips were thin and small”) are used to illustrate the nature of someone that we all can recognise in our own lives. She has qualities which deem her an introvert (“lived in a small bed-sitting room”) and perhaps even an outcast (“she’d a left squint in her eye”). She then goes on to yearn for the love and affection that passed her whole adult life by; she dreams of the local vicar (“And the Vicar of Saint Aloysius / Asked her Majesty to dance”) and feels nothing but contempt for “loving couples”, who in themselves could represent the people that have held her back her whole life, the ones who have been critical of her mere existence or maybe it is just the simple reference back to her lack of romantic experience. Almost as if by fate, she is diagnosed with cancer shortly after this – that may be representative of the illness that plagues society (the nature of which they hate so freely) and, indeed, Edith could have taken on the persona of the general public and the cancer might be retribution for the way in which they act. From this point onwards, there is a transfer of focus onto Doctor Thomas whose insensitive approach to his job even irritates his wife (“Don’t be so morbid, dear”). He invites her to the hospital for an operation and she is ruthlessly used as a learning tool, as if she is has no worth at all. Suddenly, we feel increasingly regretful for our earlier bemusement and seek to rescue her from the fate that has befallen her life, but it is too late. We cannot save her. It is disturbing to think that if the parish spinster who is rewarded for her life of sexual propriety with an emphatic and inoperable sarcoma, then what is to happen to us? The remarkable difference between the use of the ballad form (+ ACBC rhyme scheme) and the tragic nature of this story in itself represents the failure of society to meet its responsibilities to look after those who are less fortunate and less able to become fulfilled by living normal lives.
